Mona Lisa

History

Leonardo began it in Florence around 1503, most likely as a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. He never handed it over and kept working on it for years. The soft passage from light to shadow, with no hard edges, is called sfumato; it leaves the panel almost smooth, so the relief here is shallow. After Leonardo's death it passed into the French royal collection. In 1911 a former Louvre worker, Vincenzo Peruggia, stole it and kept it for more than two years, and the theft made it famous far beyond the art world.